Catholic Faith Formation Quotes

My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, firstly because she did not want me to learn how to handle weapons, but also because the meetings that were then held on Sunday mornings (before the Fascist Saturday was instituted) consisted mostly of a Mass in the scouts' chapel. When I had to be enrolled as part of my school duties, she asked that I be excused from the Mass; this was impossible for disciplinary reasons, but my mother saw to it that the chaplain and the commander were aware that I was not a Catholic and that I should not be asked to perform any external acts of devotion in church. In short, I often found myself in situations different from others, looked on as if I were some strange animal. I do not think this harmed me: one gets used to persisting in one's habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority. But above all I grew up tolerant of others' opinions, particularly in the field of religion, remembering how irksome it was to hear myself mocked because I did not follow the majority's beliefs. And at the same time I have remained totally devoid of that taste for anticlericalism which is so common in those who are educated surrounded by religion. I have insisted on setting down these memories because I see that many non-believing friends let their children have a religious education 'so as not to give them complexes', 'so that they don't feel different from the others.' I believe that this behavior displays a lack of courage which is totally damaging pedagogically. Why should a young child not begin to understand that you can face a small amount of discomfort in order to stay faithful to an idea? And in any case, who said that young people should not have complexes? Complexes arise through a natural attrition with the reality that surrounds us, and when you have complexes you try to overcome them. Life is in fact nothing but this triumphing over one's own complexes, without which the formation of a character and personality does not happen.

Salette, France (1846) The next apparition at La Salette happened four years later, in 1846. High up in the French Alps, Mary appeared to two children—Maximin, eleven; and Mélanie, fourteen—as they tended sheep. What they saw when they came upon her was unique among apparitions; she sat as a lady sobbing, her hands covering her face in grief. Indeed, looking at the turmoil in France and beyond, Mary had much to grieve over. France’s anti-Catholic streak had even reached the small village of La Salette, where Mass and the sacraments were neglected as fewer and fewer people valued the faith of their fathers. Cursing was preferred to prayer, sexual license erased purity, and greed and self-indulgence superseded piety and sacrifice. Even the children to whom Mary appeared had little faith or formation. They rarely went to Mass and were barely able to muddle through the Our Father or Hail Mary. The messages from La Salette are significant because of their length and detail.

I had spoken about the dogma of Faith being under attack even from within the Church, and I had made reference to some examples of Church teachings which were losing acceptance among many "Protestantized" Catholics. One of the seminarians of this group brought that point up again and told me that he, for one, did not believe in what I had said was the Church's teaching. It was enough for him to know that a certain Cardinal had said the opposite. "I follow the living magisterium," this seminarian told me! I could hardly believe my own eyes and ears. This was a seminarian who was preparing to become a priest to say only the traditional Latin Mass, and who had supposedly had a traditional seminary formation. As best I could tell from the discussion that followed, the superior of the group shared this seminarian's understanding of the Church's Magisterium - basically, that a "magisterial teaching" is whatever happens to be the latest word from Vatican officials, no matter how contradictory this might be to the prior constant and defined teachings of the Church!

The result has been an approach to youth ministry that has reflected two disastrous decisions. First, we have stratified the one body of Christ into generational segments, moving children and young people out of the ecclesial center of worship into effectively “parachurch” spaces, even if they’re still officially in the church building. By doing so, we have tacitly denied the unity and catholicity of the body, worshiping in ways that run counter to Paul’s remarkable proclamation that “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6). More significantly, given our concerns about formation and the rehabituation of our loves, this segmentation of the body of Christ into generational castes eliminates one of the most powerful modes of habit-formation: imitation. If young people are always and only gathered with and by themselves, how will they learn from exemplars, those model saints in the local congregation who have lived a lifetime with Jesus?